Characterizing the redshifts and luminosities of WISE selected obscured AGN using SALT optical spectra.

We present the results of several optical spectroscopic surveys covering over 100 candidate luminous obscured active galactic nuclei (AGN) identified by their mid-infrared emission detected with the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE). These galaxies were selected based on red WISE colors and galaxy-like optical emission, and were studied using long-slit optical spectroscopy with the Robert Stobie Spectrograph (RSS) on the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT). Our spectra were analyzed to obtain redshifts and emission line flux ratios for each galaxy. These results verify that WISE is an effective section method for luminous obscured AGN, allow for the characterization of redshifts and luminosities of the WISE color selected obscured AGN population, and could potentially contribute to large statistical studies of obscured AGN distributions in the future